


Reality on the Small Screen

by Ephemera_pop (Alex_Draven)



Category: Popslash
Genre: Belly Kink, Belly Rubs, Chubby!Chris, M/M, belly love, chubby!Joey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-04-11
Updated: 2007-04-11
Packaged: 2018-10-17 18:42:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10599909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alex_Draven/pseuds/Ephemera_pop
Summary: "Um, Chris. I know I've said this before, but never with such good cause: are you insane?""Joe – what's crazy about wanting to make a video?""Can I make a list?"Chris took the phone away from his ear and glared at it for a second. Then he answered before Joey could start reciting a list. Stupid, unsupportive, friends."No. Because it's not crazy. God, can't a guy ask for a helping hand now and again?""Not with fondling your gut you can't! Dude – why are you even phoning me? If you're drunk enough to think this is a good idea, then I bet at least three of your posse are over there getting drunk with y …""Joe!"  Chris protested.  "It's not even noon yet. I'm totally sober."Joey's silence was eloquent.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I think this is done. And if I don't post it tonight, I probably won't, so : for the [Choey Day](http://luxshine.livejournal.com/104761.html) reality tv challenge.  
> Huge thanks to beta team alpha, especially T who's been cheerleading this one and is why I kept writing it. I've added whole parts since they saw it last, so all mistakes are very much my own.

"Um, Chris. I know I've said this before, but never with such good cause: are you insane?"

Joe – what's crazy about wanting to make a video?"

"Can I make a list?"

Chris took the phone away from his ear and glared at it for a second. Then he answered before Joey could start reciting a list. Stupid, unsupportive, friends.

"No. Because it's not crazy. God, can't a guy ask for a helping hand now and again?"

"Not with fondling your gut you can't! Dude – why are you even phoning me? If you're drunk enough to think this is a good idea, then I bet at least three of your posse are over there getting drunk with y …"

"Joe!" Chris protested. "It's not even noon yet. I'm totally sober."

Joey's silence was eloquent.

"Screw you," Chris paused. "You really think it's that dumb?"

"Yes!"

"Oh."

"Sorry Chris." And it was Joey, so he probably _was_

"Will you look at the links I sent you?"

"Chris!"

"Okay, okay. Whatever. Look – I've got some production meeting thing to go to, talking about what they want to do to my house for the show, so – I'll catch you later, yeah?"

"Okay Chris, you take care of yourself, y'hear?"

"You too, Joe-bear."

*****

Joey looked at the links.

The nice, plausible-deniability youtube ones, anyway.

It was - well it was weird. Not as weird as he'd expected, but still pretty weird. Really. How not-weird can videos of people fondling their stomachs be? Although some of the girls were kind of hot. Not the really huge ones, but the 'my size sixteen jeans got tight' ones. And that sort of forced Joey to admit that maybe, if you were into guys, then maybe some of the guys were hot too. Maybe.

That didn't make Chris any less crazy.

*****

Three days later, when they'd run through the family-friendly topics of conversation over dinner, and Bri was in bed, and Kelly had things to do, Joey and Chris were floating about in Joey's pool, watching the plane lights go over, far above, and talking about nothing. It was Joey who brought it up.

"You remember that dumb idea you had for a video?"

"Uh huh"

"I still want to know why you called me."

"Who else was I gonna call, Joe? Who else do I trust that much?"

"Oh."

They floated about in silence for a while, and Joey did think of saying something like 'so I probably shouldn't have told everyone, then?", but he didn't.

"But it was dumb, so just, forget it, okay?" Chris said, and then. "I'm out of beer – you want another while I'm getting them?"

"Sure. Thanks," Joey answered, and then, because they'd just been talking over dinner about how he was going to have to loose some weight if he was going to go out for the dancing show, he called after Chris, "Make it one of the low carb ones?"

Chris took one hand off the pool ladder to wave back that he'd heard.

Joey didn't have the big floodlights on – that was a bit much when it was just the two of them lazing about – but the pool area was lit plenty bright enough that he could watch Chris walk over to the poolside cabana, leaving wet footprints on the concrete, his wet shorts sticking to his thighs. It wasn't bright enough that Joe could see the scars around Chris's knees but Joey still knew they were there.

The opened fridge highlighted Chris's front with sharp yellow light, and Chris bent forward to reach in for a brace of beers. So Chris had a belly. Not really news. But now Joey was looking, and somewhere in the back of his head, those weird videos were screening themselves again.

He shook his head, and then rolled off the float and into the cool, calming water.

Now he was the one who was being dumb.

***

Joey couldn't stop thinking about it.

Not so much the visual of Chris's soft stomach, three by four on a computer screen, although he did think about that. More often that he'd have expected. But the fact that Chris had asked him. Asked _him_. Joe wasn't the most introspective of guys, but he figured that had to mean something. Didn't it?

***

Another week had gone past by the time Joey got up the courage to bring up the subject again. They were at Chris's place this time, kicking back in the lounge under the guise of taking a tour of the alterations.

"And you're really okay about having the camera crews in here all the damn time?"

Chris shrugged, and tipped his head back to look at Joey, where Chris had his head in Joey's lap and his legs thrown over the arm of the couch.

"They're only here part time. And it's in the contract that there are places in the house they don't get access to, so – sure. I mean, what've I got to hide?"

Joey nodded slowly, and scratched at his beard. "But you wanted to keep that belly thing confidential, right?"

"God!" Chris sighed theatrically, rolling over and jabbing Joey in the side with one sharp elbow as he re-arranged himself, sitting up and facing Joey. "Okay, dude, clearly you have unfinished business or something with that. Just – what? What??"

He was gesturing wildly with one arm, and in the half-light of Chris's drapes Joey couldn't read Chris' expression, so he spoke slowly.

"I guess maybe I was kind of – hasty? Like, I didn't ask you why you wanted to do it, or why you wanted to have someone else involved. I mean, I looked at some of those links - and how in the hell did you find them anyway? - and it's not like you need a camera crew or anything, so ..."

He trailed off under Chris' focused attention.

"What?"

Chris smiled.

"You actually want to know, don't you?"

Joey just raised an eyebrow, and Chris' lip quirked again.

"Okay." Chris paused, rather than just diving right in, which just made Joey think that this was even more important than he'd figured so far. Chris wasn't much of one for hesitation.

"How'd I find out about them? I spent _way_ too much time dicking around on the net when my knees were really bad."

Joey moved his thumb to stroke up and down on Chris' ankle, almost unconsciously.

"Why'd I want to do one? I don't know, man. It's kind of odd. Like, a souvenir thing, maybe? Given that I'm working on loosing it. Or, you know, shallow validation – and I'm up for that! It's not like the people I sleep with don't realize I'm a fat-ass, so maybe it'd be nice to have it in black and white that some folks think that's a good thing? And why get you involved? Man, if I was going to do this it's got to be anonymous, right? I mean – it is kind of weird."

"And kind of gay?" Joey ventured.

Chris glared at him over his glasses.

"As am I."

"Good point."

"I thought so. But I guess, yes, kind of gay, kind of very weird, probably not good PA with the new show and all, and my arms are really recognizable, dude. With the ink. But I've seen a few videos where someone's lending a helping hand, and - who'd I trust more than you?"

Joey nodded, slowly, trying to fit all that in to his mental picture of Chris' cracked out head. It made a scary amount of sense.

"Okay," he said.

"Okay?" Chris repeated.

Joey shrugged. "Okay. Yes. Fine. You make sense!"

"Well, I'm glad you finally realized that. Can we watch the rest of this film now?"

"Okay."

Chris made a performance of turning back around so he was watching the screen, and leaning against Joey's shoulder, just a little bit.

And then, when the silence had gotten really weird between them, Joey found himself saying. "So, you still want to do it, right?"

"What?" Chris turned his head, and stared at Joey like Joey had grown an extra head.

"I … just … Forget it. I just thought. I mean, if you still wanna, I'm in, but if you'd rather watch Die Hard again, that's totally fine too."

"This is going to get weird, isn't it?" Chris' chin was up, which meant that he was on his guard, which meant that Joey was right; Chris did still want to do this.

"I don't think it's going to get any weirder than it already is."

"This is weird?" Chris asked.

"Um, kind of. For me. I mean – I've spent a week looking at your gut and watching weird-ass videos online; that's pretty weird."

"Oookay. You’ve really been…?"

Joey nodded, and his fingers were digging into the couch back.

"And you think maybe this wouldn't be dumb?"

"I don't know – I think putting it on the internet would be kind of risky, but if it's something you want to do …"

Joey trailed off, and the two of them were just looking at each other with the movie babbling in the background like a whole other world.

"We could do it now?" Joey offered, like dropping a stone into a wishing well, and he held his breath waiting for a reply.

"Right now?" Chris shot back.

"Right now."

"Fuck it – okay. Let's do this!" Chris grinned, and bounced on the couch, and Joey realized he was grinning too.

He'd been thinking about this for a _week_ so Joey had ideas about the practical stuff.

"You still got that video phone camera thing set up on your computer?"

Chris nodded.

"Cool – that'll work. If you take down the print off the back wall, it'll be a totally blank background and I think I know how to make the lighting … what?"

"You really have been thinking about this haven't you?"

***

Joey thought about having second thoughts.

The distance between Chris's lounge and Chris's so-called office certainly seemed a lot longer than it usually did, but then Chris turned around, and Joey had never seen that exact expression on Chris before, and he kind of liked the way it felt, to be able to make Chris smile again, just by nodding to him.

***

"I'm holding a lamp." Chris pointed out. "And, maybe that's a thing for you, but it's not really what I had in mind …"

"Oh – come here!" Joey looked away from the computer screen, where he was checking the footage that the camera was picking up to make sure it was focused just chest-to-hip, and stood up. He snatched the desk lamp out of Chris's hand and perched it right up on the top of a bookshelf. The flex knocked a pile of CD's off Chris's desk.

"Don't worry about it," Chris responded automatically, squinting at the computer screen himself, now that Joey was out of the way. ""That's not bad."

"I told you I could fix the lighting thing."

"Well, thank you." Chris' voice was oddly earnest, and the next moment was a little weird again. So Joey ducked carefully under the flex, and wrapped Chris up in a big, familiar, hug.

When Joey pulled back, the weird was mostly gone, so long as he didn't think to hard about what he was _doing_

"You going to start with your shirt off?" He made himself ask.

"Um. I guess?"

"The camera's ready to go."

"Okay."

And then Chris took a deep breath and pulled off all three t-shirts, and – it was just Chris. No different to Chris in the pool or Chris getting changed. Except that he – Joey – was about to turn a camera on them.

"You can edit this, right?" Chris asked.

"Sure. That's real easy."

"Cool."

"You ready?"

"I guess."

"Okay then." Joey leaned over, and set the virtual camera ready. The little eye-ball thing on top of the monitor was set up already, so it was just starting the recording software. He stood up slowly, and tucked himself in behind Chris, who was sticking to his mark.

"Hey, Joe-bear." Chris's bare arms stretched up to loop around Joey's neck, his head against Joey's left shoulder, his bare back was resting against Joey's body. The position was – it was really exposed, with his head tipped back, his chest and stomach thrust unguarded in front of the camera. Exposed, and trusting. Joey's hands settled gently on Chris's belly, his fingers knotting with each other, the tips brushing against the hair below Chris's naval, the heels of his hands resting on soft, hot skin.

"Hey," Joey murmured back. "You okay?"

Chris nodded, his hair ticking under Joey's neck. "It's okay."

***

Joey watched the vid.

Well, he had too, if he was going to edit out the right bit for Chris to put up on the web. A bit where it was utterly impossible for anyone to identify either of them. But it was more than that. He kept – watching it. Like, the whole thing, with the audio track of Chris breathing, and muttering to Joey to go slower, the smack of Joey's hand against Chris's gut. And when he was watching, it was almost impossible not to think about how it had felt, to have Chris leaning back against him like that, Chris's skin warm and bare under Joey's palms, the silky weight of the flesh when Joey skimmed his hands down and around, pressing up to show off Chris' belly fat to the camera.

The way it had felt knowing that Chris trusted him that much.

***

"Hey Joe-bear – Just sayin' hi, wanting to see how you were doing with finding a rental place out there in LaLa land and all that jazz. Oh – and we got another couple of comments. Just thought I'd let you know."

Chris hung up, and snapped his cell phone closed with a smile.

It was probably a good job that his den-stroke-office was on the list of off-limits rooms, 'cos even if they'd both dropped weight for their respective reality shows, Chris was going to get Joey in front of that camera someday.

Someday soon.

** * **


End file.
